Contents

Biography[edit]

Personal[edit]

Valvano was the middle child of Rocco and Angelina Valvano, and was born in Corona, Queens, New York.[5] Valvano was a three-sport athlete at Seaford High School in Seaford on Long Island and graduated in 1963.[6] He married his high school sweetheart, Pamela Levine, and they had three daughters: Nicole, Jamie, and Lee Ann. His younger brother Bob is a sportscaster and former basketball coach.

Football coach Vince Lombardi was Valvano's role model. Valvano told an ESPY audience, on March 3, 1993, that he took some of Lombardi's inspirational speeches out of his book Commitment to Excellence, and used them with his team. Valvano discussed how he planned to use Lombardi's speech to the Green Bay Packers in front of his Rutgers freshman basketball team prior to his first game as their coach.

Coaching career[edit]

Following graduation, Valvano began his coaching career at Rutgers as the freshman coach and assistant for the varsity.[6] His 19-year career as a head basketball coach began at Johns Hopkins in Baltimore for a season; he was then an assistant at Connecticut for two years. Following that, he became the head coach at Bucknell, Iona, and North Carolina State. Following Norm Sloan's departure to Florida, Valvano was hired at NC State on March 27, 1980, and made his debut on November 29, when the Wolfpack defeated UNC-Wilmington 83-59.[7] During his 10 year NC State career, Valvano's teams were the ACC Tournament Champions in 1983 and 1987 and the ACC regular season champions in 1985 and 1989. The Wolfpack won the NCAA Men's Basketball Championship in 1983,[8] in addition to advancing to the NCAA Elite 8 in 1985 and 1986. 'Coach V' was voted ACC Coach of the Year in 1989. Valvano became NC State's athletic director in 1986. His overall record at NC State was 209–114 (.647) and his career record as a head coach was 346–210 (.622).

Valvano's famous reaction of running around on the court looking for somebody to hug in the moments after the Wolfpack victory came after the game-winning shot in the 1983 NCAA finals. Dereck Whittenburg heaved a last-second desperation shot that was caught short of the rim and dunked by Lorenzo Charles as time expired. By a score of 54–52, NC State beat a top seeded University of Houston team that was on a 26-game winning streak and was led by future Basketball Hall of FamersClyde Drexler and Hakeem Olajuwon. Previously, NC State won the college basketball championship in 1974 under Sloan; the Wolfpack ended UCLA's streak of seven consecutive national titles when it beat the Bruins 80-77 in overtime in the national semi-final game.

Controversy[edit]

In 1990, accusations of rules violations surfaced in the book Personal Fouls by Peter Golenbock. These accusations centered mostly on high school All-American Chris Washburn, who managed only a 470 out of 1600 on his SAT (with 400 being the starting score).[9] A 1989 NCAA investigation cleared Valvano, but found that players sold shoes and game tickets. As a result, NC State placed its basketball program on probation for two years (the maximum) and was banned from participating in the 1990 NCAA tournament. The state-appointed Poole Commission issued a 32-page report that concluded that there were no major violations of NCAA regulations, and that Valvano and his staff's inadequate oversight of players' academic progress violated "the spirit, not the letter of the law." After this report, Valvano was forced to resign as the school's athletic director in October 1989. He remained as basketball coach through the 1989–1990 season. Under subsequent pressure from the school's faculty and new Chancellor, Valvano negotiated a settlement with NC State and resigned as basketball coach on April 7, 1990. Six separate entities investigated Valvano and the NC State basketball program including the NC State Faculty Senate, the North Carolina Attorney General, the University of North Carolina Board of Governors, the NC State Board of Trustees, and the NCAA. None of them found any recruiting or financial improprieties. However, a school investigation did reveal that Valvano's student athletes did not perform well in the classroom, as only 11 of the players that he coached prior to 1988 had maintained an average of C or better.[10] This was perhaps due to his persistence in recruiting students deemed to be "academic exceptions."

Valvano's version of these events can be found in his 1991 autobiography, Valvano: They Gave Me a Lifetime Contract, and Then They Declared Me Dead.

After coaching[edit]

After his coaching career, Valvano was a broadcaster for ESPN and ABC Sports, including a stint as a sideline reporter for the inaugural season of the World League of American Football. In 1992, Valvano won a Cable ACE Award for Commentator/Analyst for NCAA basketball broadcasts. From time to time he was paired with basketball analyst Dick Vitale, dubbed the "Killer Vees", with similar voices and exuberant styles. The two even made a cameo appearance, playing the role of professional movers (V&V Movers), on an episode of The Cosby Show.

One of Valvano's most memorable motivational speeches was delivered February 21, 1993 at Reynolds Coliseum on NCSU's basketball court during the ten-year commemoration of the university's 1983 NCAA championship. It was during this speech that Valvano stressed the importance of hope, love and persistence, and included his famous "Don't give up, don't ever give up" quotation.

ESPY speech[edit]

On March 3, 1993, shortly before his death, he spoke at the first ESPY Awards, presented by ESPN.[13] While accepting the inaugural Arthur Ashe Courage and Humanitarian Award, he announced the creation of The V Foundation for Cancer Research, an organization dedicated to finding a cure for cancer. He announced that the foundation's motto would be "Don't Give Up . . . Don't Ever Give Up." During his speech the teleprompter stated that he had 30 seconds left, to which Valvano responded, "They got that screen up there flashing 30 seconds, like I care about that screen. I got tumors all over my body and I'm worried about some guy in the back going 30 seconds." His speech included this statement:

To me, there are three things we all should do every day. We should do this every day of our lives. Number one is laugh. You should laugh every day. Number two is think. You should spend some time in thought. And number three is, you should have your emotions moved to tears, could be happiness or joy. But think about it. If you laugh, you think, and you cry, that's a full day. That's a heck of a day. You do that seven days a week, you're going to have something special.[14]

"Cancer can take away all of my physical abilities. It cannot touch my mind, it cannot touch my heart, and it cannot touch my soul. And those three things are going to carry on forever. I thank you and God bless you all."

He received a standing ovation from the ESPY crowd.

Valvano's hair was expected to fall out with chemotherapy treatment, but it didn't. Along with his ever-positive outlook, this masked to the public how serious his sickness was and the amount of pain he was dealing with.[1][11] He had preemptively had his head shaved and was prepared to use a variety of whimsical wigs on his broadcasts. But his own hair remained.[4]

Yankees[edit]

New York native Valvano had always wanted to throw out the first pitch at Yankee Stadium. He had been given that honor for the 1993 season opener to be held on April 12,[1] but he was too ill to do so. Coaching rival and friend Dean Smith substituted for Valvano.

Lorenzo Charles, the player who scored the winning basket in the 1983 NCAA championship game, died in a bus crash on June 27, 2011 and was buried in proximity to Valvano in Oakwood Cemetery. Charles was 47 years old at the time of his death; the same age as Valvano.[citation needed]

In 1993, Valvano was inducted into the Rutgers Basketball Hall of Fame. In 1999, Valvano was inducted into both the Hall of Distinguished Alumni at Rutgers University and the New York City Basketball Hall of Fame. In 2004, Valvano was inducted into the National Italian American Sports Hall of Fame. In 2012, he was named to the first class of the NC State Athletics Hall of Fame.[16]

In 2013, ESPN's 30 for 30 Films created a film about North Carolina State's 1983 Championship run, called Survive and Advance. Along with the 1983 season, it also covered the final months of his life against cancer. In 2014, fellow cancer sufferer and broadcaster Stuart Scott was awarded in his honor for his own ongoing, inspirational fight against cancer.[17]

Towle, Mike (2001). I Remember Jim Valvano: Personal Reflections and Anecdotes About College Basketball's Most Exuberant Final Four Coach, As Told by the People and Players Who Knew Him. Nashville, TN: Cumberland House Publishing. ISBN978-1-58182-219-9.